"The only blessing is that, after hours of listening to Perel's anecdotes, your mind gets soupy and Perel herself, while reading, begins to sound so jaded and cold that you start to wonder if she's slightly perverted, which, at least momentarily, makes the listening more interesting."
— Weil, Elizabeth
Author
Date
November 17, 2017
Metaphor
"The only blessing is that, after hours of listening to Perel's anecdotes, your mind gets soupy and Perel herself, while reading, begins to sound so jaded and cold that you start to wonder if she's slightly perverted, which, at least momentarily, makes the listening more interesting."
Metaphor in Context
The filler stuffed into "The State of Affairs" takes two forms. The first is endless first-name-only anecdotes meant to illustrate Perel's points. In real life, I'm sure, the stories were all-consuming. But through your headphones they are excruciating. "Alex and Erin understood the need to negotiate boundaries and lay down agreements to deter these all-too-human emotions," Perel says in her chapter on revenge. Are you kidding me? "During her two-year affair with the owner of the local bike shop, Megan got tired of hiding from everyone around her." Snore. The tedium is broken (not in a good way) with Perel saying words like Tinder and Grindr, which I suspect she does to sound with-it but have the opposite effect. The only blessing is that, after hours of listening to Perel's anecdotes, your mind gets soupy and Perel herself, while reading, begins to sound so jaded and cold that you start to wonder if she's slightly perverted, which, at least momentarily, makes the listening more interesting.
(p. 14)
(p. 14)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Elizabeth Weil, "A Celebrity Couples Therapist Turns to Adultery," The New York Times (November 17, 2017). <Link to NYTimes.com>
Date of Entry
11/20/2017
